The word on Minneapolis streets? Reconstruction

Road crews were busy Wednesday reconstructing a portion of Nicollet Avenue near 37th Street in Minneapolis. The city’s 2013 street construction season includes more reconstruction projects than in 2012. (Staff photo: Bill Klotz)

Local drivers won’t have to travel far to find torn-up pavements, orange cones and barricades on Minneapolis streets this year.

As part of the city’s $33.5 million 2013 street construction program, crews will reconstruct, repave or seal-coat nearly 55 miles of streets and parkways including the final stretch of the extended Van White Memorial Boulevard. When bridges and pedestrian and bike trails are thrown into the mix, the program covers $52 million worth of projects, according to the city.

City officials say the $33.5 million in street construction spending represents a 42 percent increase compared with the 2012 budget, when $23.5 million worth of projects hit the streets. Even so, the total miles of improvements are down from 2012 — 68 miles of streets went under the knife.

Why is the city spending more for fewer miles of upgrades? City spokesman Casper Hill said the 2013 program covers more reconstruction projects, which are more expensive than repaving jobs.

“We are doing the costlier work this season,” Hill said. Specifically, the 2013 program includes five reconstruction projects covering 2.75 miles of roads. Last year, the city tackled less than a mile of street reconstruction.

Crews will reconstruct portions of five city streets in the coming months. The streets are:

Twenty-nine miles will be resurfaced and 23 miles will be seal-coated.

Margaret Donahoe, executive director of the Minnesota Transportation Alliance, isn’t surprised that the city is spending more on reconstruction.

“For inner cities like Minneapolis and St. Paul, their roads are older and you can only patch things for so long,” she said. “They are not designed to last forever.” Donahoe said it’s “disappointing” that that the Legislature and the governor didn’t put more money into transportation in the 2013 session. She says the investment would have benefited local as well as state projects. She says the Legislature also missed an opportunity when it rejected a bill that would have allowed cities to impose a “street maintenance fee” to help pay for local projects.

“It comes down to money, and cities will have to cut back on the number of miles they can fix because of the need to deal with aging infrastructure, but also inadequate funds,” Donahoe said.

Despite the funding constraints, hundreds of city, state and county projects are moving forward this summer. In March, the Minnesota Department of Transportation said it would spend $1.1 billion on its 2013 road construction program, which includes more than 300 projects statewide.

Unlike Minneapolis, Hennepin County is more focused on preservation than reconstruction this year. Harlan Hanson, manager of the Hennepin County Transportation Department’s Construction Division, said the county has identified roughly 30 roadway segments for resurfacing. Some of the bigger reconstruction projects are in design.

“We have a number that are coming next year,” he said. “We are focusing on preservation this year.”

A notable exception to the preservation focus is the county’s $26.2 million reconstruction of Bottineau Boulevard from County Road 10 in Crystal to County Road 81 in Brooklyn Park, a project that started this spring.

Council Member Don Samuels, a longtime backer of the Van White Memorial Boulevard project, said the project is important in its scope and in its historical significance as a tribute to Van White, the city’s first African-American council member.

“I think the city can celebrate the knowledge that we are going beyond talk; we are going beyond commitments, to actual infrastructure changes that will drive patterns of transportation and mobility,” Samuels said.

Ole Mersinger, a city of Minneapolis project engineer, said the Van White work is at least 80 percent complete. The contractor, Edward Kraemer & Sons, is “on a schedule to get everything opened up in August,” he said.

In addition to the bigger projects, city crews will repave about 2.4 miles of parkways this year and seal-coat 12 parkway miles. Bridge projects include continued work on the Plymouth Avenue Bridge, restoration of a bike and pedestrian span near the University of Minnesota, and restoration of the 15th Avenue and 16th Avenue bridges over the Midtown Greenway. The 15th and 16th avenue bridges, built in 1916, will get new decks, sidewalk work, surfaced repairs and more. The projects are part of the Midtown Corridor Bridge Preservation Program.

Funding sources for this year’s program include property tax-supported net debt bonds ($29.1 million), assessments ($13.365 million), state aid ($8.1 million), and the city’s Infrastructure Acceleration Program ($1.305 million). The Van White project was paid for separately with a mix of federal, city and county money appropriated in previous years.